WaPo Publisher Weymouth Polarizes her Newsroom

Washington Post newsies are demanding raises after Post publisher Katharine Weymouth collected a 16.4 percent pay increase despite the company’s recent 66 percent plunge in profits. “It’s amazing how [Weymouth] can accept a 16.4 percent salary increase plus over a million dollars in bonuses in April while most Guild-covered Post workers haven’t received an increase since 2008," says Rick Ehrmann of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild/CWA 32035, noting that the workers’ contract is set to expire on June 7. "When the Guild asked for the same 16.4 percent, she sent the Post’s attorney to the bargaining table to cry poverty.”

Fred Kunkle, an 11-year staff writer and co-chair of the Post Guild local, told Media Matters that the union understands the paper's financial problems. But he said it does not accept such an imbalance in salary increases.

"It is obviously unfair," he said of Weymouth's raise. "We appreciate very much that the Post is facing a difficult economic climate. But why should everybody in the rank-and-file, everyone in the newsroom, suffer for it and bear all of the hardship for it? We are willing to work with management and find a way to move the newspaper into the 21st Century. It can't be by us alone giving all of the sacrifices."